The present invention relates generally to the fields of telecommunications and penal institution management. More particularly, the invention relates to a computer-based method and apparatus for controlling, monitoring, recording and reporting access to outside telephone lines in a controlled, institutional environment, such as a prison, military base, hospital, school, business or government organization.
Generally, the need to control access to outside telephone lines in an institutional environment is well recognized. In order to prevent individuals from incurring large, unaccountable telephone costs which the institution ultimately bears, one must either restrict access to outside telephone lines or institute accounting controls whereby the costs of unauthorized calls can be billed to the responsible individuals.
Telephone systems in correctional environments require additional security considerations. Without appropriate controls on telephone access, inmates have been known to use the telephones to harass outside parties (such as witnesses who testified against them, attorneys who prosecuted their case, employees of the courts, etc.), to perpetrate fraudulent schemes, and to participate in criminal conspiracies (such as arranging the smuggling of contraband into the prison, directing an outside criminal enterprise, plotting escape attempts or credit card fraud). Therefore, it is critically important for correctional management officials to carefully plan, control, monitor and record inmate access to outside telephone lines.
One of the most fundamental problemsxe2x80x94which exists both in correctional and other business-oriented institutionsxe2x80x94is cost control. To achieve cost control, it is critical that there be individual accountability for each call that incurs a charge to the institution. Such accountability is typically achieved through use of personal identification numbers (xe2x80x9cpinsxe2x80x9d). Before making a call from an institution telephone, an individual must enter his PIN. The telephone service provider is then able to deliver to the institution an end-of-the-month telephone bill which lists, in addition to the cost of each call, the PIN or name of the individual who made the call. From this information, the institution can then collect reimbursement from individuals for the costs of certain calls.
While this system of end-of-the-month call accounting functions reasonably effectively in a business like environment, it does not work well in a penal institution. The reason is that inmates show little concern for phone bills they can""t afford to pay. Thus, the institution is often forced to absorb the costs of phone calls by its delinquent inmates. Moreover, the fact that account balances are only computed periodicallyxe2x80x94i.e., every month, week, or even every dayxe2x80x94permits the inmate to accrue large, uncollectible phone bills before his access to the phones can be terminated. Traditionally, penal institutions have addressed this problem by restricting inmates to collect calls only. This, however, still provides the inmates with relatively unlimited access to the outside world, leaving open numerous opportunities for fraudulent and criminal activity, as explained below. Therefore, in a penal environment, it is highly desirable to regulate phone access on an individual, pay-in-advance basis, and to immediately and automatically terminate an individual""s phone access when his/her paid-up account reaches a zero balance.
Another problem in penal institutions is the inmates"" desire to make threatening or harassing phone calls to witnesses, prosecutors, police officers, parol officers, psychologists, judges, and the relatives and family of such persons. Limiting the inmates"" access to collect calls only does not effectively address this problem, since an inmate can easily identify himself (to an operator) as someone from whom the recipient would likely accept a collect call. Rather, one should, at a minimum, provide a means that permits a potential call recipient to identify the caller as an inmate before accepting the call, whether that call is placed on a prepaid or collect basis. Conventionally, this is done by initially placing the inmate on hold and playing a prerecorded message telling the recipient that a call has been placed from a correctional facility and that, if the recipient wishes not to receive the call, he/she should hang up before the call is connected. This approach mitigates, but does not fully solve, the harassment problem. In particular, it is still possible for an inmate to repetitively call an outside party; even if the recipient hangs up after hearing the pre-recorded message, the harassing effect of receiving repetitive calls from inside the correctional institution remains. Therefore, it would be highly desirable to provide an institutional telephone system that automatically prohibits inmates from attempting to call certain outside persons. Moreover, it would also be highly desirable to provide a method and apparatus for allowing a recipient of an undesired call from an inmate to easily and automatically prohibit all future calls from that particular inmate, or from all inmates generally.
Still another concern in correctional institutions is the regulation of access to telephone systems. For various security and management reasons, it often desirable to restrict a given inmate""s telephone access to particular phones, calling times, and to limit the length of calls, number of calls, and number of calls to the same number. Also, to enhance security and discipline, it should be possible to instantaneously revoke an inmate""s calling privileges, or to otherwise modify the extent of a particular inmate""s calling privileges.
Correctional institutions also typically wish to monitor and/or record outgoing calls. Inmate-to-attorney calls, however, cannot legally be monitored or recorded. Moreover, certain inmatesxe2x80x94those who represent particular security risksxe2x80x94deserve live monitoring, as opposed to mere recording. Thus, it would be highly desirable to have a system which automatically initiates the appropriate monitoring and/or recording depending upon the identity of the inmate placing a call and the recipient of the call (i.e., attorney or non-attorney). Likewise, it may be desirable that calls to certain numbers are to be monitored live, while others need only be recorded.
Because the message content of inmate-to-attorney calls cannot be legally recorded or monitored, such calls can serve as a conduit for the inmate""s illegal telephone activity. Therefore, it would be highly desirable to have a system which could passivelyxe2x80x94that is, without in any way monitoring or recording what is actually being saidxe2x80x94monitor inmate-to-attorney calls to ensure that: (1) the only two people speaking on the line are the inmate and attorney, and/or (2) no DTMF tones, rapid line impedance changes, off-hook conditions or voltage spikes appear on the line. Techniques for voice identification are knownxe2x80x94i.e. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,993,068, entitled UNFORGEABLE PERSONAL IDENTIFICATION SYSTEM and 5,150,357, entitled INTEGRATED COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM, both incorporated herein by referencexe2x80x94but have not been previously used in penal telecommunications applications.
In light of the above, one object of the invention is a method of managing telephone activity in an institutional environment to achieve improved security and reduced cost. Another object of the invention is a system adapted to perform such improved institutional telephone management.
Still another object of the invention is a method and apparatus for allowing outside recipients of calls from an institution to decide, in advance of connecting the call, whether to accept the given call and whether to block calls from that person and/or others within the institution or related institutions in the future, and optionally, whether to indicate to the inmate that the call has been either temporarily or permanently blocked by a particular party, including the prison administration, or the actual party called by the inmate, or that the number called by the inmate can not be reached for any number of reasons, as established by the prison administration, or the actual party called by the inmate.
Yet another object of the invention is a method and apparatus for passively monitoring a telephone connection to detect security breaches.
A still further object of the invention is an institutional telephone management system wherein the parameters that control the operation of the system as well as the records of system activity are stored in a central database, thereby permitting simple customization of system operation, generation of reports and monitoring of status.
In accordance with one aspect of the invention, a method of managing telephone activity in an institution includes the steps of: (1) identifying an institutional caller (the xe2x80x9ccalling partyxe2x80x9d) who wishes to place an outside call to an outside recipient (the xe2x80x9ccalled partyxe2x80x9d); (2) blocking the institutional caller andxe2x80x94while the institutional caller""s line (earpiece and/or mouthpiece) remains blockedxe2x80x94(a) calling said outside recipient (called party), (b) providing the identity of said institutional caller to said outside recipient and (c) receiving a control code from said outside recipient; and (3) determining, in response to said control code, whether to connect the institutional caller to the outside recipient, and optionally, whether to indicate any of a plurality of messages to the calling party, e.g., an inmate. The control code preferably comprises a series of DTMF tones, for example the sequence 4688, which spells the pneumonic xe2x80x9cGOTUxe2x80x9d. In response to the recognition of a control code, the outside recipient is provided with the option (via a voice prompt menu) of prohibiting any future calls from the particular institutional caller or, if desired, prohibiting calls from any person within the institution and/or related institutions. Alternatively, if voice prompting or voice menus are not available or not desired, then the public-at-large can be informed that the xe2x80x9cGOTUxe2x80x9d feature is available in their area, and with respect to certain institutions in their area, and then, upon receipt of undesired calls from such institutions, the called party can enter the xe2x80x9cGOTUxe2x80x9d touchtone or keypad sequence. Any multitude of call prohibitions can be established as to any particular inmate by the prison administration or the called party, including total blocking based on the called party""s telephone number, blocking during particular time periods, blocking based on the class of the crime associated with a particular inmate, etc.
In accordance with another aspect of the invention, an apparatus for managing telephone activity in an institution includes: a plurality of institutional telephones located within the institution; a trunk management unit (TMU) for selectively connecting the institutional telephones to one or more outside telephone lines, wherein the TMU includes means for decoding DTMF tones generated by the institutional telephones or received from the outside telephone lines; and a computer control unit (CCU), coupled to the TMU, for controlling the connection of the institutional telephones to the outside telephone lines based upon DTMF tone(s) received from the outside telephone lines. A database associated with the CCU contains information regarding the calling privileges of each person within the institution. In a preferred embodiment, the TMUxe2x80x94prior to connecting the callxe2x80x94plays an announcement to the called party identifying the institution and caller, along with the options available to the called party. In response, the called party may enter the announced DTMF tone sequence (preferably GOTU), which modifies a record in the database, thereby prohibiting the caller (and/or other similarly situated prospective callers) from calling the called party in the future.
Other features of the TMU provide security and monitoring functions. The invention provides three levels of monitoring, any or all of which may be active for any given call. The first level is xe2x80x9clivexe2x80x9d call (voice) monitoring, where the prison officials actively listen to a live call. The second level is call recording. The TMU can be programmed to enable associated recording equipment to record telephone calls. The third level is xe2x80x9cpassivexe2x80x9d line monitoring, where the TMU detects, for example, DTMF tones, off-hook conditions, voltage spikes and/or sudden line impedance changes, in order to thwart attempts at unauthorized three-way calling, call conferencing, call transferring, call forwarding or re-dialing via various alternate common carriers, many of whom now offer xe2x80x9c1-800xe2x80x9d or local telephone number (e.g., xe2x80x9c950xe2x80x9d) access numbers. Also, care is taken to avoid disrupting calls that do not represent security breaches, by preventing false triggering of the above xe2x80x9cpassivexe2x80x9d line monitoring features. For example, with respect to DTMF tone blocking, the TMU will look for any additional digits entered by an institutional caller, such as an inmate, to prevent the inmate from redialing to other telephone numbers that may not be authorized. However, to prevent xe2x80x9ctalkoffxe2x80x9d, whereby the normal telephone conversation can falsely trigger a disconnect signal (because the TMU may interpret the conversation as DTMF dialing), the TMU can be set to look at the number of digits dialed within a specified time period (e.g., six (6) digits within a fifteen (15) second time period, or any variation of the two parameters) and thereby, determine whether the audio information is indicative of unauthorized DTMF redialing or just a normal speech or voice pattern.
In accordance with the preferred embodiment of the invention, all calls are passively monitored and all calls that can be legally recordedxe2x80x94i.e., all but inmate-to-attorney callsxe2x80x94are recorded. At any time, prison officials can selectively invoke live monitoring to listen in on any call in progress, except an inmate-to-attorney call. System alarms, which trigger any time a particular inmate places a call or calls a certain person, allow officials to determine when live call monitoring is appropriate. Likewise, the telephone system of the present invention can be programmed to default in any manner. For example, the system can be set to place only those telephone calls that are among a preapproved list of telephone numbers. Conversely, the system can be set to place all telephone calls except those that are among a list of restricted telephone numbers. Optionally, the telephone system of the present invention can include speed-dialing, whereby upon entering a PIN, for example, an inmate can enter xe2x80x9c11xe2x80x9d followed by the xe2x80x9c#xe2x80x9d key. In that case, the prison administrator may have established that xe2x80x9c11xe2x80x9d is the speed-dialing sequence for that inmate""s mother. Of course, the system could be configured so that the inmates themselves can program the telephone system with speed-dialing digits, however, a principal objective of speed-dialing is to save time at the telephone, thus making the telephones available to the largest number of inmates in the shortest possible time period.
In addition, the invention may include biometric voice verification features. The TMU, for example, may digitize a sample of the caller""s voice. The CCU then compares the digitized sample with a stored voice print, to verify the identity of the caller. Such biometric monitoring may also be used in a passive call monitoring mode, wherein periodic samples of the caller""s voice are provided to the CCUxe2x80x94and checked against a list of authorized voice printsxe2x80x94to ensure that no unauthorized callers are participating in a call, and to ensure that inmates are not sharing or selling relatively liberal calling privileges associated with a particular PIN or inmate account to other inmates that are subject to more limited calling privileges. The use of biometric voice verification (or xe2x80x9cvoice printsxe2x80x9d) can prevent PIN abuse in general. For example, if a particular inmate with restricted calling privileges, or no available funds, attempted to force (e.g., by threatening physical attack) another inmate with relatively non-restricted calling privileges (or available funds) to turn over his PIN, biometric voice verification would obviate this problem, as the voice would be used to validate entry into any inmate account.